Character a Day Challenge Days 6&7

 Hi!

Here's the next two characters from my monthly challenge!

Lombardo Vecht

Vecht shot to fame at a young age, starring in the popular Imperial syndicated show Adventures of Jimmy Vecht, Child Inquisitor, starring as the titular hero, Lombardo was the toast of the Imperial airwaves until the onset of puberty saw the show cancelled and Vecht packed off to boarding school by his parents.

Upon graduation, Vecht found that his fame had waned and few remembered the show, other than how insufferable the youthful inquisitor was and eventually even repeats vanished from the airwaves. While the Imperium moved on, Vecht did not. Furious that he was no longer famous due to his acting skills, Vecht decided to become infamous instead and delved deep into debauchery and using his family fortune, set about searching for every arcane and forbidden tome he could lay hands on.

Over the next decades, Vecht set up numerous cults around the Farpoint sector, aided by the ineffective and corrupt Governor and eventually made a pact with a gribbly being from another dimension and formed the Cult of the Emerald Scryre. Since then, the cult has sent out numerous expeditions to find forbidden tomes and mysterious archeotech with Vecht seeking an as yet unknown something.

With the arrival of the new Governor General, the cult has had to hide itself away but is still active throughout the sector and Imperial agents are desperately trying to root them out before they find the mysterious artefact.

Here's the prompt I had for Vecht:

I didn't want to do a grimdark current 40k sort of thing with it as I'm not a fan of the whole Realm of Chaos thing so decided to go for something a bit more Cthulhu themed with some ancient being giving the foolish Vecht power but for some unknown reason.

Sister Charity of the Immaculate Flamethrower 

Sister Charity hailed from the world of Harmony, a pristine planet with a small religious community but disaster struck when Charity accidentally managed to burn down an entire forest while undergoing mandatory weapons training. Unbeknownst to the Imperium, the planet of Harmony is an Eldar Exodite world and the forest Charity burned down was a sacred grove called the Forest of Lost Dreams. 

Enraged at the sacrilege, the Eldar descended upon the monastery and set about wreaking bloody vengeance upon the inhabitants. Harmony miraculously survived the slaughter and was found by an Imperial landing party in the smouldering ruins still clutching her flamethrower.

The Eldar had set a doom upon her and she now roams memoryless throughout the sector wielding her flamethrower and burning down pretty much every Imperial outpost she encounters. While the Imperials have captured her repeatedly and incarcerated her in several convents, she always seems to mysteriously escape and burn the place to the ground as she goes. While this isn't endearing her to the church, she does also aid those in need and has saved several settlements from xenos threats before burning them to the ground herself, sparing the innocents but leaving them homeless.

The inhabitants of Farpoint class her as a dangerous but saintly figure who will save their souls but burn them out of house and home whenever she escapes from whatever unfortunate convent, monastery or asylum she resides in.

Here's Sister Charity's prompt:

I really want to introduce these characters into my Farpoint campaigns as they're rather fun to write about and suspect that there could be some really entertaining games with Sister Charity turning up as an NPC and setting fire to stuff!

In the meantime, All the best!

Character a Day Challenge Days 4&5

 Hi!

Here's the next two days worth of prompts for my September challenge!

Roberto and Marta Garcia!

Renowned Shakespearian scholar, Roberto Garcia and his wife, Marta, whilst on their second honeymoon to Beta Draconis led the charge against a zombie horde with a mixture of stirring speeches (Roberto) and excessive violence (Marta) which rallied the scattered defenders of the city and first stopped the horde and then drove it back.

In recognition of their achievements, the pair have been granted Imperial favour and backing to build a new theatre dedicated to retelling the events of the defence of Beta Draconis. 

Roberto, while a civilian has trained with weapons for defence under the strict eye of his families retainers but Marta is a retired Imperial Assassin and literal killing machine whose only soft spot is for her dear husband and his archaic speech but as he tends to wander into dangerous locales in search of inspiration on a fairly regular occasion, Marta is usually packing numerous deadly weapons to keep her erstwhile husband safe.

Marta has also gifted Roberto a servo skull which he named Yorrik which floats about in his wake reciting stanzas at random but also has a tracking beacon fitted into it so Marta can find her scholar if he wanders off.

Here's the prompt I had:

I'm rather fond of the Garcias and suspect they'll be making a fairly regular appearance in my games going forward as NPC's to add a bit of theatrical mayhem in scenarios and I'm interested to see what I get next in the random prompts. I've more or less given up on using my Story Cubes thus far as none of the prompts have stumped me but will hold them in reserve just to be on the safe side.

In the meantime, All the best!

Character a Day Challenge Days 2&3

 Hi!

I was going to post these once a week but I've been asked to post them each day so without further ado, here's day 2 and 3 of my September challenge:

Jimmy Kallix, Mafia Boss

Jimmy Kallix is a precocious youth who set his mind to running his own megacorporation by the age of eight but following a failed business venture he found himself penniless and decided that if he couldn't get what he wanted in business, he'd try crime instead. 

Ever since the Kallix mob has become infamous for bank robberies and all manner of organised mayhem as the youthful genius constantly outwits law enforcement while building himself a criminal empire that is coming to rival Lucius Goldberg, the undisputed kingpin of the Farpoint Sector.

Lucius has, thus far at least merely shown mild interest in Kallix but if the two gangs rackets begin to intersect, the sector may have a mob war to deal with.

Colonel Archibald Fluffybum III (retired)

Formerly of her Imperial Majesties 17th Regiment of Foot, Archibald led a long and glorious military career and retired to live in splendid isolation in Freeport City where he spends his time raising a veritable horde of cats.

As a gene-spliced trooper, he had to deal with many detractors but Archibald soon gained a name for himself as a capable and brave officer who rose through the ranks on ability alone and his tactics in the Vox Novis campaign are still taught in military academies sector wide. He lost an arm in the cleansing of Delta V against a rogue cult and had a bionic replacement grafted on and has elected to keep the monstrous claw in his retirement and has in recent years shown some interest in whipping the local militia into shape.

I'm really enjoying the process of designing these utterly random characters and have a dynamic duo to showcase tomorrow but until then, All the best!

Character a Day Challenge Day 1: Kermit Delaney

Hi!

As promised, here's the first of my September Character a Day Challenge!

Behold Kermit Delaney, sludge sub driver! I ended up with the following prompts and story cubes to give me some inspiration:

Kermit Delaney was once human but following a series of unfortunate events, caused by en large by his OCD, the former bus driver found himself turned into a frogman by an incensed wizard and catapulted into a strange new world. The rather confused Kermit has found himself a job in the Imperial frontier settlement of Brimcome Glades, a swampy sort of a place inhabited by swampy sorts of settlers.

He operates one of the few public transports in the settlement, a beaten up old submersible which Kermit's obsessive care has resulted in about the only vehicle that runs well and on time to boot. Kermit has found a new lease in life, freed from the alimony monies from his four failed marriages back on Earth and has found his niche. 

Fortunately for the reality jumping frog, the locals are all somewhat gene-spliced in order to survive the rigours of Brimcome so look pretty froggy themselves and Kermit has managed to avoid Imperial entanglements thus far but Inquisitorial agents have been hearing rumours of his story but have written him off as a bit of an oddball and generally harmless.

I've really enjoyed putting together the first of my characters and may end up statting up the characters for Planet 28 if folks are interested. Hopefully I'll get the next post up tomorrow so watch this space.

All the best! 

Character a Day Challenge

 Hi!

I've decided to set myself a bit of a challenge over September with the aim to create a character a day using my Amazing Story Generator and Story Cubes.

I've picked up a pack of 15x10cm card to draw my characters onto and will be getting the ball running tomorrow so watch this space!

Until then, All the best!

Retro Warmachine

 Hi!

With all the excitement over the new 4th edition of Warmachine, I found myself perusing some of the rather fantastic Guerrilla Miniature Games battle reports over on Youtube. Ash has an uncanny ability to prove enthusiastic and engaging with a lot of games I'd not really thought of before and I've picked up several rulesets over the last year or so and following the urgings of one or two of my blog followers I've decided to dip my toe in the water.

I had originally thought of picking up the original Warmachine Prime as its readily available cheaply on ebay but I decided to do a bit of research first and it looks like the 2nd edition of the game is generally seen in the most favourable of lights so with a bit of a search, I found a copy of Warmachine Prime MkII for the princely sum of £2.00.

The copy I picked up is the hardback edition and is pretty much in mint condition which was a nice surprise and I'll be having a bit of a peruse through it for inspiration.

I must admit that I picked up the original 4 boxes for Warmachine when it first came out back in 2003 from Artemis Blacks and as my painting skills back then were decidedly mediocre, I ended up selling most of the miniatures, other than a couple of the Warcasters who made their way into my Rogue Trader collection after having sat unpainted for almost twenty years.

I'm presently unsure how I want to advance with the whole thing as while the figures are really pretty cheap at the moment, apparently the game kind of died the death during its last version and folks seem to be selling off collections for very reasonable sums, I really don't need more miniatures at the moment as I mentioned in my previous post we are going to be moving soon so more figures might not be a good idea...

Saying that, I may end up co-opting the setting and forces into Brutal Quest, try out building a small warband or even sculpting my own stuff but its definitely one for the back burner for the moment. As with all my projects, this is liable to change on a whim but we shall see. 

I doubt I'll pick up the new edition of the rules as I'm awkward like that and prefer pootling around with old editions or out of production stuff that nobody plays anymore but I may end up picking up the odd book or figure for a bit of a mini project once we're settled in our new place.

If nothing else, I will have a fresh source of background to peruse and may end up porting the whole lot into a skirmish setting ala Mordheim but with stompy steampowered robots...

In the meantime, All the best! 

A Trio of Adventurers

 Hi!

I've finally got round to getting my current adventurers illustrated, despite the campaign having been going for about three weeks now!

Fael is a northern barbarian who was exiled for her ability to summon elementals, something the tribal druids greatly disapproved of. She has since moved south where she has been inhabiting the Whispering Arch, a ruin that lies deep in the ancient forest that lies to the north and east of the Axeblade mountains.

Modwen the goat. Modwen is Fael's companion who followed her into exile and is usually the first into the fray, bowling over foes with his mighty horns. 

Arud is the latest addition to the party and is a golem, an artificial being who Fael encountered outside the Dwarven settlement of Crucible. He's desperately trying to track down his master but his cortex has been badly damaged so he has very little in the way of memory.

I'm really enjoying playing out the campaign as the trio move further into the wild regions of Aeroth and it's been great fun to see how they develop using Brutal Quest as the basis for their encounters as well as my trusty story cubes to move things forward. 

Fael is proving to be an outstanding ranger type of character who has repeatedly spotted potentially hazardous situations as well as a surprisingly decent summoner. Modwen is turning into a bit of a beast in close combat but has been seriously wounded in an encounter with an Elven Golem and the trio is currently hiding out in a cave to avoid a search party that an as yet unknown antagonist has sent out from the Iron Spire to hunt them down.

Arud is proving to be a bit of a fire magnet having been reduced to his last few points of damage in pretty much every encounter he has but he still keeps on going (he's been set on fire twice, pincered by giant insects and mauled by a mutant bear as well as speared by a crazed Goblin!)

Hopefully I'll get chance to get some figures sculpted for the three in the not too distant future as I suspect they're going to be making regular appearances in my games going forward but it may be a while as I've potentially got a house move coming up in the next few months as I'm moving from Dundee to Perth Waterstones to take on a new role which is exciting but also mildly terrifying when it comes to the prospect of packing up all our tat and finding a new home for the first time in six years.

We shall see how things go and hopefully a move will be relatively straight forward and I'll be able to get back to proper gaming soon but in the short term I suspect most of my hobby related content will be pen and paper only as everything is going to be packed up and put into storage until we can sell our place and find somewhere new.

In the meantime, I will keep posting as regularly as I can and All the best!

Richard